Thoughts While Vacuuming Dog Hair in 32-Degree Heat

We live in a time where a banana duct-taped to a wall can still command mainstream news attention, be called art, and even sell for $6.2 million. This is nothing new, though; it is simply a continuation of the low barrier to entry set by Tracy Emin's My Bed back in 1998. I feel foolish even mentioning her name and work in this text, as I strongly dislike the art world and the imposters who lead it. It was around that time that I began to seriously question the integrity of the system surrounding me. I was in school, holding a 4B pencil, being told to draw well, to replicate perfectly the object in front of me, while at the same time, the outside world was presenting the idea that everything is art. The idea that everything is art, combined with the pessimistic, unambitious nature of British culture, caused a premature existential crisis within me. I suddenly felt a sense of dread for my future.

It was only a few years later that reality television became a prominent format, replacing educational documentaries like Channel 4's Equinox. Since then, the playing field on which we operate has been incrementally inverted, with timeless principles giving way to a circus of inanity, where merit is awarded to those who have never exercised a moment of self-reflection. This degeneration is not just confined to the art world but has seeped into every facet of society—from the way our leaders govern, to what is considered creativity, to how the media engages with the public.

The issue today is that inclusivity is defined by superficial traits like gender or skin color, rather than cognitive abilities. What truly defines our independence is the way we think and approach challenges. This is tied to the hierarchy of cognitive functions, which make us distinguished beings, not our external characteristics. When someone's character is criticized because it doesn’t align with a group's ideology, they are marginalized. The system, unable to understand their true intentions, views them as a threat. This is evident in the current U.S. political climate, where figures like Elon Musk, Tulsi Gabbard, and J.D. Vance are often targeted. The media highlights any negative attribute they have, when, in fact, it’s their competence that they fear.

See, the duct-taped banana symbolizes more than just a calculated expression of irony; it illustrates the manufactured apathy toward human potential perpetuated by Hollywood and the mainstream media. This is evident in the Democratic Party’s campaign, where over $1.5 billion was spent in just 15 weeks, with irrelevant celebrities and overhyped performers who would barely be able to communicate without a teleprompter duct-taped to them. These figures supported a candidate with no substance in a campaign that insulted the intelligence of anyone with common sense. On the campaign trail, voters were told that the other candidate was a "threat to democracy," when, in reality, the true threat was the very individual currently in office, perpetuating that rhetoric. These false claims were carefully amplified by 90% of America’s mainstream media, which, rather than acting as journalists, chose to function as PR agents for the Democratic ticket. This systematic conditioning attempted to indoctrinate those who, deep down, know something is upside down but have been made to believe they are wrong.

Currently, in Western civilization, we are enduring superficial leadership—like that seen in the Biden administration—that thrives on empty soundbites saturated with hypocrisy, gaslighting hardworking citizens into believing the sky isn’t blue, while offering only solutions to the additional problems they create, pushing us further away from the real root of the issues that no media outlet would even venture to discuss. Meanwhile, the reinstalled British Labour Party—an embodiment of decay—acts like a dialysis machine, churning through anything that holds the warmth of promise and turning it into the bleakness of their own brand of bureaucratic despair, telling innovators thousands of miles away like Elon Musk what pace they should run at. These individuals, with no foresight or signs of independent thought, are responsible for the dangers that face our everyday lives, yet they couldn’t even manage a banana stand. This infantilization of the people they are meant to be working for—by allowing rockets to be fired without the consent of the public or any trace of official announcement—is not leadership. In turn, this creates the ever-growing resentment, spilling over onto social media like the Incredible Hulk bursting at the seams, which is essentially manufactured by these leaders' incompetence, then labeled “right-wing.”

Orbiting this devolution, we find figures like Elon Musk as one of the stark, surprising saviors. Musk builds rockets of hope, fueled by an optimistic vision of human potential that dares to imagine interstellar travel and the terraforming of Mars. His endeavors represent faith in humanity’s capacity to evolve and explore, a sharp contrast to political leaders who continue to fund rockets of destruction. The irony is that these same leaders chose to antagonize our adversaries into a potential nuclear conflict, which, with one exchange, could reverse their climate change prospects by hundreds of years. So it makes sense why Musk is so envied by the non-player characters that bulk out the front benches in Westminster—because they dislike anyone who has ownership of their mind and soul. Instead of celebrating his achievements, critics attack him as a "threat to free speech," confusing his actions with intentions of wrongdoing. Even figures like astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, a man who is only capable of theorizing and has never built a single company, let alone launched a human into space, claimed, “SpaceX hasn’t done more than NASA.”

And the internet, which was once a somewhat peaceful space for charming exploration, is becoming infiltrated by a duality designed to perpetuate dissolution. The way out is to switch on "Ad Astra" mode and look to the stars. And by "looking to the stars," it doesn’t always mean traveling to space; it means taking full ownership of your truth, without needing external validation. As you get older, your curiosity, hope, and creativity become more vulnerable, so make them "anti-fragile," because these are the very qualities the system fears most. This becomes even more important as we step closer to AI, and retaining that sense of human judgment will benefit us in the long run.

Counter the pessimistic and anti-ambitious mindset I first began noticing back in England in 1998—a mindset that has now spread to America and beyond, transformed into gritty reboots of a once-promising reality, by bad actors in Hollywood, hell-bent on breaking our faith in humanity.

Our system must shift away from the divisive narratives of labeling and categorizing—narratives that tell us what to think, rather than how to think. We must move beyond binary thinking and develop the critical thinking necessary to understand that nuance and context are always present. Vision should not be confused with dictating, and alternative opinions should not be labeled as "far-right."

In the end, striving for truth, hope, and integrity—whether in art, thought, or leadership—has become the new "Rage Against the Machine"—not by raging against the very system that gave us the freedoms in the first place.